The Jewish community is shocked by a play, adopted from a novel by a French Jewish academician, George Steiner, in which Hitler, not dead but now a sprightly 91, defends the “final solution” and points an accusing finger at Israeli avengers who have captured him and put him on trial in the jungles of Brazil.
The play, which opened at the Mermaid Theater, with a skilled actor, Alex McCowen, portraying Hitler, consists of two parts. In the first, Hitler’s captors catalogue the sufferings of their loved ones.
In the second half, Hitler delivers a rambling monologue, the point of which is that he modelled his National Socialist doctrines on Jewish separatism; that the Old Testament has subjected mankind to moral blackmail; and that the “final solution” was indispensable to the creation of the State of Israel because it taught the Jew how to drive the “lice ridden” Palestinian Arabs from his land.
In the play, Hitler has the last word: that he, not Theodor Herzl, is the true founder of the Jewish State and that the Jews should acknowledge him as their Messiah. The play is titled “The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.” The author of the novel on which it is based presently teaches at Cambridge.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
